Chapter 1

I was born in Huizhou.

There was a saying: “Fail to cultivate virtue in your former life, and you will be born in Huizhou—then tossed out into the world at fourteen or fifteen.”

In that remote, barren country, feeding a half-grown boy was hard; feeding a newborn was harder still.

During the bitter winter of the sixteenth year of Zhaoqing, my parents could not afford rice or support three children.

My elder brother was delicate and scholarly, already able to read and write. Father could not bear to part with him.

My elder sister was sweet-tongued and clever at charming her elders. Mother could not bear to part with her.

Only I—the ugly newborn with nothing to recommend me—lay there bawling as though heaven and earth belonged to me.

My parents hardened their hearts, opened the door, and put me outside.

In the twelfth lunar month, an infant left outdoors would freeze to death within a quarter of an hour.

A passing monk caught me up at once. “What a pair of lazy wretches! How can you throw away a baby just after she is born?”

Father muttered, “We are too poor to raise her. Better she never came into the world.”

“This child has an extraordinary face,” the monk said. “She may be destined for wealth and honor—perhaps even high office. Keep her, give her a little water, and spare yourselves the sin of killing her.”

The people of Huizhou believed in neither Buddha nor Dao. Anhui revered Confucian learning; why would anyone heed a wandering monk?

My parents drove him away with sticks.

Dodging the blows with cries of pain, he protested, “I am a monk. Even if I take her, I cannot feed her! At least find a decent household and give her away.”

Mother snapped, “Who would want such an ugly baby?”

Then the tightly shut door next door creaked open, and a slender woman stepped out.

Sister-in-law Qing said, “I will.”

The winter of Zhaoqing’s sixteenth year was long and cruel.

At first, Sister-in-law Qing could still sell tofu. Later, no one had money, and people stopped eating tofu.

No tofu, tofu skin, or bean cakes.

They gnawed crops from the fields and caught insects from trees.

I was a three-month-old baby who wailed every day for rice gruel.

Rice was a luxury in Huizhou.

Grain grew only on level, fertile soil worthy of being called farmland.

But Huizhou was seven parts mountain, two parts water, and one part field. After subtracting the houses built against the slopes, hardly any land remained.

Sister-in-law Qing was a widow with neither son nor daughter, and only one mu of barren ground where nothing grew.

To feed me rice gruel, she left before dawn and returned after dark.

Even so, idle men harassed her.

“Ah Qing, you have no husband. How did you manage to produce a baby?”

Sister-in-law Qing glanced at my father next door. “The child is not mine.”

Mother’s ten-month pregnancy had been impossible to hide. The neighbors had all hoped she would bear another son, only to see a baby girl arrive.

They understood at once.

Humiliated, Mother tore angrily at the broom straw. “She is only an ugly little thing. Whoever wants her can have her. I certainly don’t.”

Sister-in-law Qing calmly shook a rattle over me without looking up. “The monk said my Ah Jin will become a great official. When she succeeds, someone had better not come crying and making a scene.”

“As if!” Mother stamped her foot. “If that girl ever amounts to anything, let the heavens fall, the ancestral graves collapse, and my name be written backward!”

The sky, clear only a moment before, abruptly darkened. A violent wind rose.

An auntie beside her jumped and tugged her sleeve. “Zhaolan, don’t say such things!”

Mother froze, glared at me, and went home in a fury.

“Wicked luck!”

After they left, Sister-in-law Qing awkwardly tied me to her back.

She stroked my cheek with affection but said nothing.

That night, Little Liu, the village headman’s son, suddenly came running and shouted outside our door, “Sister Qing, there will be heavy rain tonight. An old grave has washed down from the mountain. Take little Jin and stay inside!”

Instead of being frightened, I giggled.

Sister-in-law Qing was working her loom. At the sight of me, she smiled too, and her usually stern, austere face softened.

“All right. We will not go anywhere.”

After the grave washed down, the village men were summoned for corvée labor again.

If Father refused, my elder brother would have to go.

Father studied my frail brother and his writing hand, then gritted his teeth and went.

“Wensheng, you must study hard. The duty of bringing honor to our family rests entirely on you!”

My brother nodded.

Yet from Sister-in-law Qing’s house, I often heard him talking in his sleep.

In his dreams he called for Little Peach Blossom of Heavenly Fragrance House and for women from the brothels.

Brother did nothing but study and had a room of his own, unlike my sister, who slept beside our parents.

Only Sister-in-law Qing and I heard his dreams.

Whenever he began murmuring, she covered my ears with her clothes.

With Father away, my sister wove cloth to earn money for Brother’s ink, leaving Mother alone to farm.

One day, half-blinded by sun and exhaustion, she saw a figure before her and assumed Father had returned. Without looking up, she cursed, “You heartless old devil! Enjoying yourself outside while you work me to death!”

The man was the anxious village headman.

Mother stared in horror. Only then did she notice that the stranger beside him wore official robes—not showy in color, but made from the finest cloth.

The headman hissed, “Fool! This is Instructor Wang from our county. He has come to confer a chastity arch!”

Realizing the trouble she had caused, Mother rolled her eyes and fainted.

Fortunately, Lord Wang was easygoing. He did not take offense and left after the ceremony.

The chastity arch was for Sister-in-law Qing.

The clan had followed the court’s new fashion and submitted her name with several others. None of the rest were approved; in Zhuangyuanping Village, only she received the honor.

Before leaving, Lord Wang gave me a tiny writing brush.

He advised Sister-in-law Qing, “One must look forward. You have a child now, so live your life well.”

She did not explain. She simply wrapped the brush tightly in cloth and put it away.

Mother, meanwhile, became the village joke for her tactlessness. People called her the “sow who barred the decree.”

Nothing new ever happened in the countryside, and no one dared gossip openly about a solemn affair like a chastity arch.

But Mother’s disgrace was perfect fodder. Her surname was Zhu, a homophone for “pig,” and her family had little power. Thus “the sow who barred the decree” stuck.

In that way, her name truly had been turned backward.

She must have recalled her oath. When Father returned, they shut themselves inside and whispered for half a day.

The next morning, Mother flung a basin of water out the door, then carried over a woven bamboo basket.

“Sister Qing, thank you for minding my little daughter. Our circumstances are better now. We cannot have another household raise her forever, so it is time you returned her, don’t you think?”

Sister-in-law Qing smiled. “Auntie Lan, that is not what you said before.”

“Fine, I changed my mind.” Mother grew impatient. “My husband keeps saying daughters are considerate and hinting that he wants little Jin back. Do not worry—we will still have her recognize you as a foster mother and care for you in old age.

“My eldest is a scholar and may become a high official. You can rest easy!”

“Pretty words,” Sister-in-law Qing said, “but I do not believe them.”

“You don’t believe me? Stealing another person’s child brings retribution! Your dead husband and mine belong to the same Fang clan. Aren’t you afraid the family will come after you?”

“Then let them come.”

Mother stamped her foot in outrage.

The next day, they met in the Fang ancestral hall.

Mother was the sharpest tongue for ten li around. Before the clan elders, she wept and raged until a hall full of men sat speechless.

In the end, the patriarch merely helped her up and sighed. “You and Deming are still young. You can have more children. We understand your grievance. Next year the clan will give you two more mu of land and cover all of Wensheng’s ink and brush expenses. But you must not ask for little Jin back.”

Mother gaped. “She is my own daughter. Why can’t I take her?”

“That is true. But Ye Qing’s chastity arch was bestowed by the county, and she asked only one favor of the clan.”

“W-what?”

“She asks for this one daughter and promises to remain a widow for life. Could you make the same sacrifice?”

Mother bit her lip and said nothing.

After that, she never tried to reclaim me.

She did, however, dress my elder sister in her prettiest clothes and parade her past our door, swaying her hips for Sister-in-law Qing and me to see.

“What good is following that thin, flavorless woman?” Mother would say bitterly. “One day I’ll make the little wretch regret it!”

As for me, I grew. Fed spoon by spoon on rice gruel and tofu, my cheeks filled out.

I was no longer the ugly infant I had been, and a faint smile began to appear on Sister-in-law Qing’s face.

The Fang elders who came to see me all called me a blessed child.

Then they sighed. “A pity she’s a girl. Ah Qing, why didn’t you take a son?”

Sister-in-law Qing only shook her head. “I’m no fool. I picked up little Jin so I could enjoy good fortune. Just wait until she comes for me with an official flower in her cap, formal robes at her waist, and three tall horses!”

Everyone said something was wrong with her head.

Only I knew she spoke the truth.

When I was three, the fields turned green again. Sister-in-law Qing bent down and asked, “Little Jin, do you want to study?”

“Study? What is that? Is it writing characters and reciting words like Brother?” I asked in my baby voice.

“No.” She shook her head. “You study to understand reason—so soldiers cannot bully you, officials cannot deceive or oppress you, and you may walk from the edge of a field all the way before the Son of Heaven.”

“Then I want to study.”

Yet on the night before I was to begin school, Sister-in-law Qing suddenly fell ill.

Second Aunt Jin came to care for her and sent my tiny self scurrying back and forth on errands.

From the bed, Sister-in-law Qing opened her eyes weakly. “Don’t tire yourself, little Jin.”

Second Aunt Jin was blunt. “Didn’t you take in a child so someone could help you? Huizhou children learn to cook at three or five and weave at seven or eight. Spoil her like this, and she will never find a husband.”

“A husband?” Sister-in-law Qing shook her head. “In the end she would only live as you and I do.”

Second Aunt Jin paused and said no more.

Yet she returned the next day to help.

Mother watched for a long while, then awkwardly delivered a basket of fresh water chestnuts.

Hands on her hips, she declared, “These are leftovers we cannot finish. Don’t read anything into it!”

Sister-in-law Qing said nothing. She peeled the chestnuts and fed them to me.

Illness made her voice hoarse. “Your birth mother has only half a mu of pond. She would not eat these herself. Have some more.”

A few days later, she recovered.

No matter how Second Aunt Jin argued, she insisted on sending me to school.

She took a key from beneath the teapot and opened the old cupboard. From a blue-flowered cloth bundle, she drew a box—her wedding dowry, scrubbed spotless.

Every copper coin, scrap of paper money, and silver pellet inside went toward ink and paper.

Holding my hand, she walked to Master Deqi’s old residence, and from there into the rest of my life.

Master Deqi had moved here from Jixi.

They said he had held a high office, but in old age he wished to retire in peace and settled in Zhuangyuanping.

His home was an immense, three-courtyard Huizhou residence, with rockeries, flowers, and tall horse-head walls.

He taught indoors, and whenever Sister-in-law Qing and I passed, we heard students chanting.

They were always boys—until I joined them.

That happened only after Sister-in-law Qing spoke with Master Deqi for a very long time.

While they talked, I squatted by the courtyard and counted ants. A boy passed.

A cool wind was rising, but his clothes were thin. He looked like a slender, upright bamboo stalk.

“What are you doing down there?” he asked.

“I am looking at Benevolence, Righteousness, Propriety, Wisdom, and Trust.”

“Are those the names you gave these ants?”

He was clever. Others laughed when I said such things, but he understood at once.

Pleased, I nodded. “Yes.”

He laughed, his face suddenly radiant. “What a little trickster.”

Later I learned his name was Ye Mingzhen.

My little desk stood behind his.

Master Deqi called him Boru and told him to teach me.

He obediently did as instructed, but through the cracks in the desk I saw the patches on his clothes and his torn straw sandals.

He was as poor as I was.

But Sister-in-law Qing loved me. Though she never said so, she braided my hair neatly, gave me the only egg, made padded winter clothes, and fished sweet melons from the well water for me in summer.

Ye Mingzhen’s mother treated him poorly. She wanted him to become a high official so she could earn an honored title.

When everyone else went home in bitter cold, he stayed alone in the schoolroom.

Master Deqi oversaw his studies but not his daily welfare.

At the time, I understood none of this. I only knew his fingers were always red with cold, like radishes in a field.

Radishes were nearly all he ate.

Perhaps his family plot was too small, and every grain they raised went to rent.

When I passed his home, I saw a tiny thatched hut whose roof blew away whenever wind and rain came.

Second Aunt Jin whispered to Sister-in-law Qing, “The Ye clan has no conscience. They seized one hundred and twenty mu of good paddy from the widowed mother and her son, then drove them into that ruined hut behind the mountain.”

Sister-in-law Qing had married in from elsewhere, but she knew a clan’s power.

Mountains enclosed Huizhou on every side, preserving an inward-looking land where clans reigned supreme.

A foreign monk’s sutras held no sway here. Outsiders fared no better.

Through marriage, families across the prefecture and its six counties grew into interlocking vines. Ambitious men sought fortunes in all directions, then returned in old age as wealthy patriarchs who governed local affairs.

A clan’s honor and prosperity sheltered women and children.

Yet a powerful clan might also prey upon the weak and abuse widows and orphans.

Ye Mingzhen and his mother had the misfortune to meet the latter kind.

Tiny Zhuangyuanping held great lineages named Fang, Ye, Zhang, Wu, and Zhu.

Each clan enclosed its own land, lived scattered apart, and left the others alone.

Local custom could neither stop the Fang clan from supporting its old and infirm nor stop the Ye clan from tormenting women and children.

In that age, women could not stand independently.

A widow—a woman whose own life was considered already ended—had even less power.

Sister-in-law Qing knew how little weight her words carried and remained silent.

In private, however, she told me to bring our spare food to Ye Mingzhen.

She and I ate little; a few bites made a meal.

Ye Mingzhen accepted Guanyin tofu, but not grain.

His stubbornness bordered on pedantry.

“It is hard for Sister Qing to farm. I cannot take this.”

If I returned with the food, she would scold me.

In desperation, I rolled the rice wrapped in lotus leaf into a ball, bit it, and thrust it at him.

“Eat! Eat it!”

Ye Mingzhen lowered his gaze to the tiny tooth marks.

He fell silent.

I dug in my heels too. “It is my leftover. If you do not eat it, I’ll throw it away!”

I wrapped the ball again and made to toss it.

At last he moved.

“I’ll eat.”

Spring brought a hundred flowers, autumn the moon; summer brought cool winds, winter snow.

In the courtyard, Ye Mingzhen and I shared rice ball after rice ball.

He grew tall and well proportioned, more and more like a cool, elegant stalk of jade bamboo.

Such a youth did not seem made for the countryside.

Even Master Deqi often stroked his beard and sighed, “Pines and cypresses grow on barren ridges; noble sons rise from poor homes.”

Still, Ye Mingzhen studied in silence and endured.

The only change was that he patiently taught me characters without fail.

I was clever. Master Deqi and the other teachers all said so.

But I was mischievous too.

At five or six, I had no patience for the sages.

The ink and paper on the desk interested me more.

Was ink born black, I wondered, or did someone make it so?

Why was paper soft? Was paper everywhere this soft?

The teacher said, “The Way of Great Learning lies in manifesting luminous virtue.”

I wondered, How should one understand brushes, ink, paper, inkstones, merchants, and the four classes of people?

Naturally, I was punished.

Three certain strokes of the ruler raised welts across my palm.

Ye Mingzhen took the remaining two for me.

“Do not forget why your mother sent you to study!” the teacher scolded in bitter disappointment.

Ye Mingzhen said nothing.

The teacher was clearly reproaching me, yet Ye Mingzhen seemed to bear the shame.

He pressed his lips tighter and tighter.

So it was: a boy’s pride was fragile, rippling under the slightest wind.

Ye Mingzhen never again shared a meal with the ignorant, unstudious me.